Car visors play a critical role in driving safety and comfort by preventing eye glare from the sun. They also provide shade at the side window. Car visor has generally a rectangular opaque visor sheet installed moveably inside the car above the windshield.
The visor sheet can rotate around a horizontal bar at its top edge. The horizontal bar has a vertical extension attached moveably to the roof of the car to allow horizontal rotation of the visor sheet toward the side window.
The visor sheet is frictionally attached to the horizontal bar with a snap mechanism that secures it above the windshield when rotated upward close to the roof of the car. The snap mechanism keeps the visor in its designated park location and prevents unintended downward rotation of the visor and blocking of the driver sight. The frictional force between the visor sheet and the horizontal bar helps to keep the visor sheet at any angular orientation set by the driver.
With the single point of pivotal attachment, the relatively long visor sheet has a cantilever geometry which makes the attachment vulnerable to positional drift and vibration. Therefore, a receptacle fixed to the roof of the car movably holds part of the horizontal bar at the free end of the visor sheet.
The receptacle also works in a snap action mode to firmly hold the end of the rod. The visor sheet can be rotated while secured with flexure force in the receptacle and can be pulled away and rotated to the side window. The receptacle provides the snap action force either through its own flexure or a spring.
To move the visor sheet to the side window, the user must rotate the visor sheet downward, pull the end out of the receptacle and then rotate the visor sheet horizontally. This pulling force is relatively high which takes excessive effort and causes substantial driver distraction in the process and increases risk of accident.
The driver distraction in pulling the visor end out of or into the receptacle cannot be eliminated by reducing the receptacle holding force as it compromises the receptacle functionality and its main purpose.